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Comment by DanBC | Hacker News Reader

You point about abuse is incorrect. Abuse (physical, sexual, or emotional abuse, or neglect) is more likely to happen in the home, perpetrated by a family member.

I'm not sure why it's a reason to avoid home schooling. Schools are not great at spotting and reporting abuse.

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I think that you misunderstood me. The majority of child abuse happens at home (~72,000 parents vs. ~58,000 known non-family [0]), but it happens in broken homes, second marriages, etc. Most homeschooling parents are together and in their first marriage, so they, just going by the statistics, aren't likely to abuse their children.

For a source on the uneven distribution of abuse by family members, I would suggest to start with this HHS report: [1]

"Children living with their married biological parents universally had the lowest rate, whereas those living with a single parent who had a cohabiting partner in the household had the highest rate in all maltreatment categories. Compared to children living with married biological parents, those whose single parent had a live-in partner had more than 8 times the rate of maltreatment overall, over 10 times the rate of abuse, and nearly 8 times the rate of neglect."

[0] http://www.nationalchildrensalliance.org/NCANationalStatisti...

[1] http://www.acf.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/opre/nis4_report_...

Thank you for the correction, especially for the detailed links.

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